Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter3

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Things had gone from bad to worse.

Pursuing Aradia or the Bologna Succubus required going outside, but passing through that crowd unnoticed wasn’t possible.

Or so Kamijou thought.

“Huh?”

After descending the emergency stairs and carefully opening the door, he found the crowd pressing in from nearby. But none of them were looking his way.

“Aradia may have ordered them to ‘kill Kamijou Touma’,” whispered Othinus from his shoulder. “But did she ever snap a photo of your face with a phone or camera? If it was an oral command with no photographic reference, you might be able to get through undetected.”

He was glad his clothes had dried. He wanted to avoid anything that would make him stand out.

“But they have access to those modern marvels too,” cautioned Kumokawa Seria. “New Year’s Eve is basically one giant photoshoot here. They might be tracking down a photo on social media that happened to catch you in the background. This doesn’t guarantee your safety, so be careful.”

But he honestly had some more immediate things to worry about at the moment.

“Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?”

“Kyah!? Stop grabbing at my clothes!”

“I work so hard! Day in and day out! So why don’t I ever have any more money? Someone out there must be counteracting my efforts!!!!!”

The people out there were arguing back and forth.

The girl in a large eyepatch, a wimple, and a modified bikini looked an awful lot like the video site ghost Kamijou had seen near the station. Her lack of chest left a lot of openings in Aradia’s costume, which actually made it more risqué. And who was that swinging around a folding chair with all her might? Yes, wasn’t that the tanned call girl in a camisole?

The deep metallic sounds coming from her didn’t match her jiggliness at all.

(I met them both with my delivery job, so I’m glad we didn’t use our names or phone numbers. We only know the 8-digit single-use ID we gave each other.)

“Give it a rest, you- gyah!?”

A bluish-white beam shot off in the wrong direction.

Was that lightning? The eyepatch ghost had flipped through her looseleaf papers and traced her finger along something written there, but it looked like her attempt to retaliate with Triple Reload had failed.

Yes, the scary thing here was how the magically-powered witches were being pushed back by the powerless witch hunters. The Bologna Succubus had said the Rule of Three magic introduced a large risk of self-destruction. It was a tricky spell and going through the process was probably hard in this chaos and with a crowd packed around you so tightly.

“The real difference is that the witches want the help of the beneficial supernatural if they can get it, but the witch hunters will not give up until they have eliminated the negative anxiety they feel.” Exasperated, Othinus watched the commotion from Kamijou’s shoulder. That god of war, deception, and magic explained her thoughts. “''A group that fears death will act fearless if it will distance them from death.'' That might look contradictory, but it happens all the time during riots and wars. When people are pushed passed their limits, they will step on a mine themselves or rush straight toward the incoming shells or flamethrowers. With enough people doing that, they can bring down the enemy force. When you aren’t crossing the border for fun and the collapse of your country is a real possibility, anyone who still acts ‘reasonable’ will be overwhelmed and lose.”

“I don’t believe it…”

“That’s the normal way to think. And war doesn’t just mess with people’s patience and sensibilities – it tears down their standards of normalcy. Which is why this sort of thing is best avoided.”

They didn’t have time to stand around watching.

There was more than one kind of hell underway here.

The cat on Index’s head was growling a low warning for once.

In fact…

“Damn, this area’s covered in blood!”

“Boy, the rioters didn’t do this. It was the glass shards that supposed demon sent raining down earlier.”

In her thick coat and tight skirt suit, Kumokawa pointed toward the rusty smell.

Several girls lay on the cold sidewalk at the base of the building. They were all witches. Their groans joined the rusty smell. The downpour of clear blades must have hit them directly, but everything around them was in chaos. No one was even considering treating their wounds.

And Kamijou himself couldn’t do anything more than pull out the obvious shards and tie up the wounds with whatever cloth he could find. He had no way of checking for smaller shards and, even if he saved their lives, he wasn’t sure if this would leave scars on their skin.

“Ugh.”

“Don’t say anything. I stopped your bleeding, so you’ll be fine for the time being!”

“Thank you. Now I just have to find Kamijou Touma.”

“…”

With no photo, the girl had no idea who she was talking to.

For that matter, what had they even gathered here to do? What would have happened to him, Index, and the rest if no one had interrupted? For that matter, ''if the witches couldn’t determine who near the building was Kamijou Touma, could they have tried to fulfill Aradia’s command by going on a magical mass shooting of every high-school-aged boy they came across?

“(Boy, it would be dangerous to stay much longer.)”

“(But we have to call an ambulance for them, Senpai!)”

“(I overheard some girls over there talking about your delivery job. Delivering the food uses a single-use ID, but you have to use your real name when cashing out at the convenience store. So you need to get away before they- hey, wait! You and your stupid kindness!!)”

Kamijou shook his head to drive out the fact that he was being targeted by 100 thousand witches who had given up on thinking for themselves and converted to the Transcendent’s cult.

He couldn’t do this like the Bologna Succubus.

He refused to accept that you didn’t need to care about someone if they were a bad person.

After roughly stopping all the injured witches’ bleeding, Kamijou tried to call an ambulance but found he couldn’t get through even with the emergency line. He didn’t hear the usual ringing – he just heard three short beeps before the connection ended.

“What, I can’t even call the emergency number? Why are the lines so overloaded?”

“Because the entire city is like this right now, human. Unless Aradia and the Bologna Succubus are stopped, who knows how long it would take for an ambulance to arrive even if you did call for one. These people are covering the sidewalks, roads, and the cars parked on the curb.”

That meant he had to end this entire commotion if he wanted to get professional help for those girls.

That meant chasing down Aradia and the Bologna Succubus.

If the emergency numbers weren’t working, then the normal internet was out of the question.

“If no one can use social media, it might take them longer to work out your identity,” said Kumokawa.

“…”

“Okay, okay. I take it back, boy. Say whatever you want, just don’t glare at me like that.”

How frightening did he look today? For some reason, even that perfect upperclassman raised her hands awkwardly. When he tried to look her in the eye, she averted her gaze.

Othinus sighed from his shoulder.

“Your face was everywhere back when the two of us were on the run from the world in Denmark. No one can check that right now with no internet access, but someone with a good memory might still recognize you.”

“Are you saying they’re gradually narrowing in on me?”

“Frankly, it’s strange they haven’t figured it out yet.”

Kamijou was so plagued by misfortune he knew better than to chalk that up to luck. He needed to be on the lookout for some even greater disaster waiting to ensnare him.

At any rate, he wouldn’t be able to track down the Transcendents by checking for the latest photos posted by witnesses on social media.

“Shibuya is a big place. Where do you think they went?”

“Those Transcendents are decently skilled at magic, but too dumb to even use a people clearing field to hide their presence. Just head for the center of the commotion, human. That will get you there quickest.”

“Got it, Othinus. Index, Senpai, follow me!”

The god was telling him to charge right into the most dangerous part of the riot. He would honestly have preferred having Index and Kumokawa take refuge in a sturdy building, but he had no idea where would be safe at the moment.

They kept low while moving through the crowd flooding the streets. It pained him when he saw some people grappling nearby, but Kumokawa grabbed his hand when he reached out to help. She silently shook her head.

The ordinary ramen shops scared him at the moment.

A riot like this could lead to a fire so easily.

None of them recognized him without a photo, but all of these 100 thousand witches were after Aradia’s enemy: Kamijou Touma. However, the witch hunters had no real reason to protect him either. If he did anything to stand out or the witches learned who he was, both sides would attack even harder and make it impossible to move.

“(Hate me for this if you want, but for now you need to keep your head down and ignore all of these supposed witches.)”

“(But, Senpai!)”

“(If they notice you and start to attack you directly, the individuals working to protect you will be trampled by both sides of the conflict. And I mean that literally. We will be trampled to death below living people’s feet. The supernatural isn’t the greatest threat during a riot. It’s being crushed to death ''without anyone even noticing they’re doing it''!!)”

He was honestly surprised there weren’t any fires yet.

Meanwhile, Index spoke up.

“Aradia, huh?”

“?”

He really didn’t want her saying anything that would provoke the witch hunters, but they mostly appeared to be responding to the witch outfits at the moment. Index was dressed pretty unusually (and had a cat on her head), but they ignored her completely.

But that meant the witches could attack them at any moment for not wearing that uniform.

“Touma, do you know when Wicca was created?”

“Don’t use his name!” shouted Othinus from his shoulder.

Kamijou frowned.

“When? I mean, we’re talking about real witches here, so long, long ago in the times told of in fairy tales, right?”

“No, it was created in 1954 AD. Yes, there may have been some prototype witches before the official textbook was released, but it was officially announced in 1954.”

That was a surprise.

What the heck was this? That was after World War Two. Hadn’t the story of the bear grease come from a cursing ceremony some British witches had directed at an entire country to keep the German army away during the war?

“What’s this textbook?” he asked in a bit of a daze.

“The witches use what they learn to write a grimoire they call the Book of Shadows, but it is highly unusual for one of those to reach the level of a true Original Grimoire. When Gardner released his own collection of self-taught knowledge, it doubled as a report on the truth of witches.”

Kamijou wasn’t exactly an expert on children’s stories and fairy tales, but he was pretty sure there were stories that included witches – like Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Hansel and Gretel – that were older than that.

For that matter, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would have already been out by 1954. He had a hard time believing that no one around the world had ever imagined a witch flying a broom through the night sky before then.

But Index’s explanation kept going. She made sure to hold down the cat on her head when he took an interest in the garbage strewn from a toppled garbage can.

“Witches are said to be the priestesses of an ancient religion that predates the arrival of Christianity, but they aren’t the originals. They’re a reproduction created in a later era. A magical researcher named Gerald Gardner, who even interacted with ''Crowley'', is said to have dug up the ancient mythologies and religions from before they were twisted by Christianity and carefully reproduced the original texts from before witches were considered villains.”

“And Aradia is the perfect witch based on his findings?”

“I don’t think so,” bluntly stated Index.

In the distance, something was being shaken up and down like a mikoshi. Kamijou glanced over at it without really thinking and gasped when he realized it was a van large enough to carry 10. Since the windows were covered by a chain mesh and the roof had red lights on it, that had to be a police vehicle here to keep an eye on the countdown. Also, it didn’t look like it was the supernaturally-powered witches who were doing it. The panicked group didn’t even care if their targets wore a witch outfit anymore.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“It has been pointed out that Gerald Gardner had a few biases when creating his reproduction of the ancient witches. Of course, even on the magic side, that kind of skeptic tends to be the sharp-tongued type who don’t make many friends, but it is true Gardner’s supposedly ‘perfect reproduction’ included some inauthentic sexual ceremonies just because he loved them so much. Do you get what I mean, teenage boy? I’m talking about the kind of sexual ceremonies groups of witches hold in secret night after night.”

“Um…”

Kamijou wasn’t sure how to respond to that one, so he looked the other way and groaned, earning him a glare from both Othinus and Kumokawa. The teenage girls’ faces told him that response had earned him a failing grade. But what was he supposed to say when they brought it up in the first place!?

The only girl oblivious to all this placed her finger on her chin.

“The biggest story among all this was Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.”

?

Kamijou frowned. Index had mentioned that title before and it bothered him that it included the name Aradia.

“It was presented as a report on the legends conveyed to the author by an Italian witch, but like I said before, no mythology features a goddess named Aradia. Since it even calls her the daughter of Lucifer and Diana, it seems likely that it was all made up by the witch on the spot in response to what the author wanted to hear.”

“Wait, so you mean it’s all based on nothing?”

“Probably.”

Kamijou placed his hand on the back of Index’s head to have her crouch down. Real money was flying around like confetti and the cat on Index’s head kept punching at it. He didn’t even want to know where that had come from.

And Index was a little too oblivious to her surroundings while lost in thought.

“The problem is that Gardner believed every word of the report ''and included the legend of Aradia in his Wiccan spells''. And at such a deep level there is no removing her.”

“…”

That made sense.

Hadn’t a fake ''female magician'' who only existed as the name Anna Sprengel in some letters played a role in the foundation of the Golden cabal? The idea that Westcott had made her up entirely hadn’t seemed so likely after Anna herself showed up, but Kamijou was growing less certain of that.

Index continued over the mechanical alarm of a vending machine or ATM.

“In that sense, you could indeed say that Aradia is the goddess of all witches. How it got that way is complicated, but everyone involved in Wicca today is receiving the blessings of those Aradia-born theories. And if you follow the instructions found in the looseleaf Book of Shadows written by each witch, anyone can use her magic.”

Then what was this woman claiming to be Aradia trying to accomplish? If she only wanted the blessings of that name, just being any old witch would have been enough.

Was the story of Aradia entirely made up?

Or was she such a powerful being that the humans had failed to record her presence accurately?

A beam of light shot into the night sky with the intensity of a nearby lightning strike. Even from here, Kamijou could see what he thought was Shibuya Pelko’s roof being torn away. That was the Wiccan Triple Reload, but it must have failed again. If it were under control, it would have crushed the witch hunters (who were really ordinary people rioting).

A shrill scream burst from the cloud.

More magic had failed.

Hadn’t he been told the line between good and bad deeds was determined by general consensus rather than any individual? He was starting to wonder if only Aradia could control that magic. Even if she had distributed her secret technique, that didn’t mean everyone could perfectly absorb that information.

The large discount store and department store scared him. If the furious rioters stole some kitchen or hardware tools, this could easily lead to bloodshed.

Kumokawa Seria whispered to him while reflexively keeping her head low.

“You wanted to reach the heart of the commotion, didn’t you? I think you’re almost there.”

“What? Are you saying she circled all the way around the station and returned to the scramble crossing?”

You couldn’t take a direct route with so many rioters around. Had she naturally wandered back there while avoiding the streets blocked by rolled-over cars and barricades of piled-up bicycles? But was that really a coincidence? Hadn’t the Bologna Succubus also flown in a circle and returned close to their starting point when escaping through Shibuya’s sky?

Was there some kind of magical meaning to making a big circle and going into hiding?

Or maybe it was a common understanding within the Bridge Builders Cabal that showed itself when they were on the run.

(Did Alice do anything like that?)

During that day wandering through Academy City’s darkness, he recalled a few times when he was separated from Alice and they were unnaturally reunited, but he couldn’t say what route she had taken.

He thought about it a bit, but he wasn’t going to find an answer right now.

Because he had seen something else.

Two Transcendents stood at the center of the scramble crossing, surrounded by the crowd of witches and witch hunters.

Car headlights shined in from multiple directions, casting their shadows in just as many directions.

Enough rioters had appeared to separate an entire ward from the rest of Tokyo and the people even stood on the roofs of a donut truck and a red fire truck that had failed to escape in time.

It was actually beautiful.

This was the center of the riot that had left Shibuya entirely nonfunctioning, but all of the rioters kept their distance so as not to disturb those two. It gave the scramble crossing the harmony and formality of an international competition. Just the two of them had overpowered and held back hundreds of thousands of people.

They were not using dreadful magic or demonstrating superhuman strength.

Perhaps this was the true essence of the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

They corrupted their surroundings.

They ruled the very space they occupied.

They possessed an overwhelming charisma. It wasn’t an issue of good or evil, legal or illegal. Their very presence loudly announced that they made the rules and they were the true pillar from which the world was constructed. In other words, they were transcendent.

Aradia glanced over at Kamijou. With a single shadow stretching from her feet, the witch’s eyes shined bright like a small child offered a sweet treat. The expression didn’t match her sexy modified bikini, but that was in fact the extent of the power balance between her and Kamijou Touma. No matter how hard he might push himself.

So when she spoke, it wasn’t directed at him.

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“He’s here.”

“Verily.”

The Bologna Succubus smiled bitterly and sighed with her light pink wings spread. She had multiple shadows spread out like a flower thanks to the headlights.

“I went to all that effort to help you escape the riot and then you come marching to the center of it anyway. You really are incorrigible. But maybe that’s what makes me want to protect you so much.”

“''Are you sure about this?''”

“''I am.''”

With that, the Bologna Succubus and Aradia both took action.

But hold on.

Something deep in Kamijou Touma’s chest was ringing an alarm bell. What had they just said? The Bologna Succubus had run off after irresponsibly turning the people of Shibuya into rioters in order to fight back against Aradia. That much was true. But that didn’t mesh with what was happening now.

For one thing, the Bologna Succubus had been running away this entire time.

If she could defeat Aradia in a one-on-one fight, why had she been so adamant that they needed to run away?

It was over before it started.

The “legend” built up around that demoness unraveled.

They didn’t even get to exchange attacks. The Bologna Succubus was sent spinning through the air before slamming back down into the asphalt. Her wings were bent and pinned between her body and the ground.

The Wiccan Triple Reload spell had done this.

But Kamijou didn’t understand what exactly had happened to her. There hadn’t been any obvious light or noise. That spell was something else entirely in the hands of Aradia.

Every good deed she made using magic would return to her at triple the power.

And she would have set things up so doing all this to Shibuya, spreading her witch cult, and creating 100 thousand witches were all considered good deeds.

The transformation of 100 thousand people into witches and everything they had done

The riot in Shibuya.

It had all been gathered together, multiplied by three, and sent in to attack the Bologna Succubus.

“You should have known there was no defeating me.”

Aradia kept her palm aimed toward her enemy with a thin smirk on her face and her long silver hair spread out behind her.

Did even this count as a good deed in the world of witches?

“Your Cold Mistress takes every single pleasure signal – which are meant to efficiently guide us toward survival and reproduction – and converts them all into intense pain. I can’t deny it is a dangerous power that could even stop that tyrant Alice if the conditions were right, but if I soak myself in negative emotions like regret and hatred, then you have nothing left to convert. Your spell is powerless if I do not seek out pleasure or comfort.”

“…”

“Yet you still decided to challenge me directly. A demon ignoring the odds and hoping for a divine miracle sounds like a double standard to me, Bologna Succubus.”

The demoness couldn’t even get up.

Which meant she had no way of stopping Aradia from revealing the truth.

“Is he really worth going this far to protect?”

“Ah,” groaned Kamijou.

''He should have realized.

Yes, all of Shibuya was engulfed in a massive riot. Objects had been destroyed and blood had been shed. But with hundreds of thousands rioting, he had yet to see a single death. How had that happened? Someone must have set it up that way.

“How shortsighted. I imagine your plan was to have him hide beyond my reach while I was dealing with you, but that fell apart the instant my foolish target trotted on up to us without even noticing what you were doing. ''You failed to earn his trust.'' You should have given up on the fool, so why was a Transcendent like you so obsessed with him?”

When the Bologna Succubus had broken that window at the capsule hotel, it had injured the girls directly below. But what if she hadn’t done that? If 100 thousand people had tackled the building, how many would have been crushed and killed in the process? None of them would have hesitated to do so without the blood to frighten them.

“Ah, ah.”

''He should have realized.

She had taken flight, saying she would handle the rest of the fighting on her own, but was that really her being irresponsible? If she were really irresponsible, she could have abandoned the fight against Aradia, left Shibuya, and ensured her own safety.

The witches vs. witch hunters looked a lot like a clash between two Transcendents tearing Shibuya apart, but Aradia had always been the one to make the first move and the Bologna Succubus had always been responding after the fact. The Bologna Succubus couldn’t take the initiative, so it was always Aradia making the surprise attacks. That was why the Bologna Succubus had flown from that window. By taking a route Kamijou’s group couldn’t follow, she had hoped to keep them out of this extreme battle.

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

''He really should have realized it so much sooner!!

The Bologna Succubus’s actions had been consistent from start to finish! She had rescued Kamijou for no real reason, rejected all false accusations directed at him, and risked her own life to save all people in that position!! Yes, and she had even said the witch hunts counted as a type of false accusation. She couldn’t ignore that, so of course she would have tried to protect the witches kneeling to Aradia!!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He poured all his strength into running.

He crouched in front of the Bologna Succubus and propped her up since she was too badly injured to even get up on her own.

“No, no.”

Her voice was frail and her body felt unnaturally cold. Like she was missing something.

“I didn’t – cough – want you to see me looking so pathetic.”

“Pathetic?”

He thought on that word.

There was nothing he could do but shout.

“In what world is this pathetic!? Goddammit!!”

Something was staining his clothes, leaking through, and soaking his skin.

It was her blood.

He started to reach out, but Kumokawa reached out her own hand uncertainly.

“That wound is bad, boy.”

“Yeah, I know!!”

The blood kept flowing without stopping. It was more than internal bleeding this time. Even he could tell this wasn’t your average wound. He was a fairly experienced brawler, but not even he knew what to do about this one. At this rate, she really would lose her life.

She had already passed out in his arms.

If nothing was done, she would die.

He couldn’t remember the name at first.

But then he recalled that other name that had been key to this incident from the very beginning.

“Yeah, that’s it. Good, Old Mary!!”

“You’re going to rely on her, human?”

“What choice do I have!?”

He shouted into the night sky with the Bologna Succubus in his arms.

He didn’t know where that woman was.

But she was the only chance left.

“I know you’re out there somewhere, so save her – save the Bologna Succubus!! Please. You saved me after I had my spine and guts torn out, right? You did that for a stranger who your cabal thinks is trouble! But this isn’t an enemy! It’s another Transcendent from your cabal!! So why wouldn’t you-”

“''Because it would not work.''”

Out of nowhere, he found someone standing right next to him. Even ''Othinus'' was caught off guard and gasped.

“?”

The woman’s long blonde hair spread out at ankle length and she wore a long, loose dress.

The stomach looked especially loose, so it may have been a maternity brand. The thick belt lazily wrapped around her produced a series of deep metallic sounds. They sounded like jangling bells, but they were actually a variety of camping kitchen products clanking together. He didn’t know what meaning they held, but they included a fancy multitool from Switzerland, a portable pot with a collapsible handle, a small burner that could be used as a stove, and a sandwich toaster. The knife with a weird seal mascot on it made her look more like a type of Kuchisake Onna than a homemaker.

The brim of her large hat hid her eyes while her alluring lips whispered to Kamijou. He couldn’t distinguish them from a physical voice, but she may have been using common tones like the Bologna Succubus had.

“She told you from the beginning that mama’s resurrection is not all-powerful. Technically speaking, mama’s resurrection recipe only closes up a dead person’s wounds and returns them to the initial moment of cardiac arrest, making it a very boring and common sort of miracle. No matter how perfectly the body is mended, it must contain enough blood for CPR to work. Otherwise you will only have a fresh hunk of flesh to watch slowly decompose.”

He didn’t understand.

Yes, the Bologna Succubus was injured all over. Yes, she had internal bleeding in her gut from earlier. But he had been resurrected after having his torso pierced through and torn open. It wasn’t like she was hemorrhaging a fountain of blood.

It was Aradia who gave him the answer.

“You can’t blame him for not remembering what happened when I killed him so quickly. He was in no state to form the memories in the first place.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“True. And if he doesn’t know, it means she intentionally didn’t tell him. That was a meaningless choice, but mama quite likes that sort of kindness.”

“What do you two know that I don’t!?”

Good, Old Mary froze in place and Aradia shrugged.

Aradia was the first to speak.

Good, Old Mary’s silence functioned as mild criticism of her revealing the truth the Bologna Succubus had kept hidden this whole time.

“You lost your life more than once at my hand. When I directly destroyed your torso.”

“What about it?”

“''Didn’t you find it odd?'' That kind of injury means a lot of lost blood. Of course it does when I calculated out a death that would prevent Good, Old Mary from resurrecting you. So why was she still able to do so anyway? And twice in a row at that?”

He thought about it and then looked down into his arms.

He focused on the disturbingly “cold mistress” he held there.

He noticed something odd on the inside of her left elbow. He pushed her arm cover out of the way and found a special bandage covering the small mark left by needle.

Good, Old Mary must have decided there was no hiding it anymore, so she provided the answer.

“''She gave you her blood.''”

“…”

“The blood needed to save you came from her. Enough to make up for your destroyed spine and stomach the first time and your ruptured liver the second time.”

He heard a straining sound coming from his back teeth.

He hated this.

It infuriated him.

It hadn’t been misfortune after all. He hadn’t just been dragged into a fight between these Transcendents. Which one of them had truly dragged the other one into the pit of death!? He wanted to curse his own foolishness!!

“Why?”

He was shaking.

Unable to fight the intense emotion, he shouted into the ear of the demoness held tightly in his arms.

“Why didn’t you tell meeeeee!?”

She didn’t give a single word in reply.

Her eyes were shut, her limbs hung at her side, and her body was limp. She wasn’t even conscious anymore. Even she would ''end up like this'' once she hit her limit. He still didn’t have a good grasp on what a Transcendent was and maybe they didn’t even qualify as human anymore, but he should nave noticed. Before he allowed it to end like this!!

There must have been hints.

For one, hadn’t she said the Transcendents tried to work out a unified plan ''because they were afraid of dying'' and also feared that unpredictable Alice would tear it all down with a smile at some point!?

Good, Old Mary provided the truth.

“She has lost as much blood as you did in your two deaths, so mama’s resurrection will not work on her. She is already past the limit. It is honestly amazing she could still move around at all in that state.” Her words were precise and cruel. “But that ends here. Third time’s the charm, as they say. All that movement has ended once and for all here.”

The Bologna Succubus had been laughing and showing off her skin to tease the boy.

But even that had been a desperate act to keep him from realizing what was really going on.

He thought back on all that.

He thought on what the word “savior” really and truly meant.

This had never even been her fight. She had only done all this to meddle in Kamijou’s affairs when the Bridge Builders Cabal’s Killers decided to take his life. If she had stayed out of it, it would only have meant a quick and near painless death for a complete stranger.

She could have kept out of it because it wasn’t in her power to stop it. When he had died, she could have deemed her attempt a failure and gone home. When she found there was no way left to win, she could have left and saved herself. But she hadn’t done any of that. She had given him her blood and repeatedly put herself at increasingly greater risk for a clueless idiot who kept throwing away the precious second and third chance at life she had given him. She had even thrown out all those safer options and started a fight she couldn’t win to protect a complete stranger.

She refused to allow any and all false accusations.

She wanted to create a world where no innocent people were made to suffer.

That was really and truly her only reason.

“To hell with this.”

What could he do? The Killers, the Rescuers, and the entire cabal didn’t matter anymore. What could Kamijou Touma do for the Bologna Succubus who had literally saved his life twice!? After thinking for a bit, his trembling abruptly stopped.

He had found what he needed to do.

He focused on the path forward.

“Good, Old Mary.”

“Yes?”

“Would your resurrection work if she had enough blood? What if we could get her her missing blood?”

“No.”

She bluntly rejected that idea.

She didn’t allow him even the small possibility he had used to gather up what little fighting spirit he had left.

“A demon can give blood to a human, but it does not work the other way around. A human blood type cannot be used to save her. No one in the world can do that.”

That made sense. If ordinary blood would do, then the Bologna Succubus could have gone to a hospital, borrowed a transfusion kit, and “recharged” to give them more chances at resurrection. But she hadn’t done that.

There was no way of saving her.

He wasn’t even given the right to throw away his life to fight for her.

His vision started to go dark, but then…

“You Transcendents have some weird gaps in your knowledge. Or maybe these are blind spots born of unexamined assumptions.”

Kumokawa Seria interrupted.

The ever-perfect upperclassman hadn’t given up yet.

She was willing to keep fighting for Kamijou’s battered spirit.

“You said it was human blood types that prevent us from saving her, but does that mean injecting her with a typeless blood substitute to stabilize her blood pressure would work?”

The Transcendent in a big hat tilted her head for a few seconds.

Then a slight smile formed on her lips. The Transcendent had accepted someone else’s opinion.

“I see. An interesting idea.”

“Just to be absolutely sure, can we save the Bologna Succubus by stringing her along just long enough with a completely artificial substance like saline, Ringer’s solution, an iron distribution fluid, or even artificial plasma? Think this through carefully. That boy’s future is counting on this!!”

“That method should work. If you can stabilize her blood pressure somehow or other and keep her ready for resuscitation, then mama’s resurrection should work just fine.”

“Then let’s go with that. Boy, that means you too!!”

Kumokawa slapped him on the back and then started tying up the Bologna Succubus’s thighs with some rope she found, even though the wound was on the demon’s gut. She didn’t seem to care how much blood was getting on her fancy coat and suit. He wasn’t sure what she was doing at first, but apparently she was trying to increase the blood flow to the vital organs by restricting blood flow to the extremities. That was one way of feigning an increase in blood pressure without increasing the total amount of blood. A fighter pilot’s g-suit used the same principle. A mistake here could easily lead to necrosis in her legs, but Kumokawa showed no hesitation.

But this was only buying them a bit more time.

It wasn’t a fundamental solution.

Good, Old Mary kept her eyes hidden behind the brim of her hat while she glanced down at that desperate work.

“However, it is unlikely an ambulance could reach us through this riot. The hospitals themselves will be overwhelmed too. There will be no doctors available to perform first-aid even if you carry her to a hospital yourselves.”

“What’s the actual limit?” bluntly asked Kamijou.

The answer came so smoothly it almost sounded cold.

“If you wish to complete the transfusion before she dies, you would need to begin within 20 minutes.”

“Got it.”

They would fake the conditions needed to save her.

They would snatch her away from the deadly grasp of fate or god.

He held the Bologna Succubus tight once more before relaxing his grip.

“Senpai, where’s the closest major hospital? A general hospital that accepts emergency outpatients would be best.”

“I’m searching now. The phone service and social media sites are overloaded, but the GPS isn’t so bad. Only because my provider uses an Academy City satellite, though.”

“Index, you help Senpai carry this biggest idiot in the universe to the hospital. That should be faster than waiting for an ambulance.”

“Okay, but what about you?”

That wasn’t really a question. Her tone made it clear she already knew the answer.

If the Shibuya-wide riot wasn’t ended in the next 20 minutes, the Bologna Succubus’s treatment couldn’t begin. Then her heart would stop and there would be no saving her.

But on the other hand, she could be saved as long as the riot was stopped before then.

“Good, Old Mary.”

“Are you sure you want mama going ''with them''? Mama is a Transcendent who can create a small universe in a clear box and make use of any and all recipes. Mama would have much better odds of winning a fight against Aradia, who has mastered the witchcraft of the ancient forest and carries the blessings of the night and the moon.”

“You worry about your job. After getting our hopes up like that, you don’t get to come back and say you couldn’t save her after all.”

Her eyes were hidden behind her hat, but she still seemed to be examining the boy with an appraising eye.

She was judging the resolve and determination of an average, normal, and ordinary high school boy.

And she finally nodded.

From there, they didn’t waste time with excess words.

“''Leave it to me.''”

“''Then you leave this with me.''”

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW6.png|thumb]]

He left his savior’s life in her hands.

Then Kamijou Touma scraped the soles of his shoes against the pavement to turn and face his enemy.

She stood at the center of the scramble crossing.

That Transcendent could have attacked at any time, but she had chosen to watch it all play out. He had always been her one and only target. The Bologna Succubus’s opposition would have been a surprise and she would probably prefer it if her fellow cabal member were saved. So she wouldn’t bother pursuing the Bologna Succubus, Kumokawa, and the others. Not because she was a good person or wasn’t that kind of person – she simply had no reason to.

On the other hand, she wasn’t going to stop the witch riot.

Her top priority was killing the threat, not rescuing her fellow cabal member.

But Kamijou Touma was not going to let that happen.

He clenched his right fist so hard it hurt. The target of that fist stood right in front of him.

He had to get started.

He had to take that first step forward.

“Aradia, you might be a witch goddess of the night and of the moon and you might be a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

“Are you all done chatting?”

“But I will destroy all of your illusions in the next 20 minutes. Got that? 20 minutes. By then, I’ll have ended this riot of witches covering Shibuya!!”

Scarlet flames burned the night sky.

Every breath pulled black soot deep into the lungs, which was enough on its own to shorten someone’s life.

A fire was burning deep in a forest where the old superstitions had never died.

It burned the small log cabin, the garage added to the side, and even the pile of firewood the old lady had smiled and bragged would get her safely through the winter.

What had that little old lady done to deserve this?

Because her life in the forest had taught her how to tame birds? Because she was too old and feeble to keep the black cats from sitting on her windowsill? Because she lived all alone away from society? Because her long life had left her with no shortage of old tales to tell?

Maybe it was all of those reasons together.

Whatever the case, when a mysterious infectious disease ran rampant in the area, the people concluded she was behind it.

“Don’t worry about me.”

Black pieces crumbled from what the witch goddess held in her arms.

Beautiful, noble, and resigned words spilled from the old woman’s cracked lips.

The people who proudly held their giant crosses high probably had no idea this was happening in one corner of the world. With more than 2 billion believers, they would probably complain if they were asked to take responsibility for the actions of a mere 1% who had lost control.

But that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

These things happened and then were always written off as a margin of error so small it could be ignored.

A life had been carbonized to the point she had no recognizable eyes or mouth left, but she still gathered her last ounce of strength to get out one final whisper.

“So please. Save the next one instead.”

A mere 50m away, the curtain of dark trees opened up onto a highway. A giant billboard stood there for the drivers to see: ''Grapple’s latest phone – the MilliPhone 15 High End – makes its debut this fall!!

…Yes, I will rid the world of this.

The witch goddess roared into the moonlit night while holding a stranger’s corpse so close her hair and cheeks were covered in soot.

Her job wasn’t done yet.

Even in the present day, the world hadn’t changed in the slightest.

It never would unless someone worked to change it.

She couldn’t abandon this mechanism of salvation just because the age of witches was a thing of the past.

So Aradia continues to roar in a world full of true contradiction and cruelty.

She had decided to save any and all witches.

No longer would she be a mere witch.

She swore to herself she would become a goddess.